This invention relates to methods of bioremediating an organic hazardous substance.
Environmental cleanup of industrial sites and water supplies is often mandated by federal and state governments. These cleanups can be extremely expensive and time-consuming. Traditional methods of environmental cleanup have focused on the use of physical means of removing the contaminant, such as air-sparging plus soil vapor extraction, or pump-and-treat systems. Both technologies ultimately transfer the hazardous substance, in a concentrated form, to a filter for disposal at a hazardous substance facility.
In stark contrast to these traditional environmental cleanup methods stands the relatively new field of bioremediation. Bioremediation can be technically defined as the conversion of an organic hazardous substance into a form which is less toxic or nontoxic. Bioremediation efforts to date, however, have focussed on cometabolic degradation of the organic hazardous substance (such as, for example, trichloroethylene (TCE)) by using compounds such as toluene, phenol, methane, methanol, propane or butane. All of these, themselves, are hazardous substances and their addition to, for example, a contaminated aquifer, even if they are biodegradable, is neither encouraged nor permitted in some cases.
What is needed, therefore, is a method that is effective in bioremediating organic hazardous substances, but which avoids using toxic materials.